In sculpture, a colossus is a statue of enormous magnitude. The Asiatics, the Egyptians, and in particular the Greeks, have excelled in these works. The most celebrated Egyptian colossus was the vocal statue of Memnon in the plain of Thebes, supposed to be identical with the most northerly of two existing colossi (60 feet high) on the west bank of the Nile.
Among the colossi of Greece the most celebrated was the Colossus of Rhodes, a brass statue of Apollo 70 cubits high, esteemed one of the wonders of the world, erected at the port of Rhodes by Chares, 290 or 288 BC. It was knocked down by an earthquake about 224 BC. The statue was in ruins for nearly nine centuries, when the Saracens, taking Rhodes, sold the metal, weighing 720,900 lbs, to a Jew, about 653. There is no authority for the popularly-received statement that it bestrode the harbour mouth, and that the Rhodian vessels could pass under its legs.
Among the colossi of Phidias were the Olympian Zeus and the Athena of the Parthenon; the former 60 feet high and the latter 40 feet.
The most famous of the Roman colossi were the Jupiter of the Capitol, the Apollo of the Palatine Library, and the statue of Nero, 110 or 120 feet high, and from which the contiguous amphitheatre derived its name of Colosseum.
Among modern works of this nature is the colossus of San Carlo Borromeo, at Arona, in the Milanese territory, 60 feet in height; the 'Bavaria' at Munich, 65 feet high; the statue of Hermann or Arminius near Detmold, erected in 1875, 90 feet in height to the point of the upraised sword, which itself is 24 feet in length; the height of the figure to the point of the helmet being 55 feet;
the statue of Germania, erected in 1883 near Rudesheim, a figure 34 feet high, placed on an elaborately-sculptured pedestal over 81 feet high; and Bartholdi's statue of Liberty presented to the United States by the French nation, and which measures 104 feet or to the extremity of the torch in the hand of the figure 138 feet. It is erected at New York harbour on a pedestal 114 feet, is constructed for a lighthouse with what was at one time was one of the most powerful fixed lights in the world, and stands 317 feet above mean tide. Research Colossus
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Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
General Information
Research Colossus
